The opening phase of day 17 at the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry continued with Rowena Orr, senior counsel assisting the Commissioner, taking over from the previous day's questioning of NAB's witness Andrew Hagger, the group's chief customer officer for its consumer and wealth business.In this role he leads NAB's retail banking businesses, broker partnerships, financial advice, direct banking and digital bank UBank.Orr was keen to expose a process that had become widespread in the bank's wealth advice business, of having a second person witnessing a client's signature afterwards, despite not being present. And as Orr helped the Commission discover, it was not one bad planner that was at fault for an action in October 2016- more likely it was 350 advisers over several years, affecting a potential 2500 clients.The clear danger was that if ever an insurance or superannuation provider discovered this and decided to play hardball, NAB's client - or nominated beneficiaries - may not have been paid out as expected.Orr took Hagger through a series of documents showing a NAB adviser had forged clients' initials on documents after he had left meetings, and asked colleagues to witness their signatures when they had not been present. This was discovered during a random audit and the adviser, Bradley Meyn, was sacked within two days for misconduct.NAB did not notify the Financial Planning Association of this, nor did it tell ASIC so that the adviser should be included on ASIC's Financial Adviser Register of banned advisers, if appropriate.The reason for this, Orr managed to extract from Hagger, was the Breach Review Committee determined that there was not a breach and, hence, not reportable to ASIC. This view was later reversed."It has been an evolving process, ... ASIC didn't need to know about all advisers, they said, but what they wanted to know about, which is what they clarified in a meeting with me on 1 May, was that they wanted to know about misconduct situations," said Hagger.And it soon became much more than a story of one or two examples of non-compliance: Tim Steele, general manager of NAB Financial Planning, prepared a memo to the Breach Review Committee warning that: "NAB's employees who were engaging in this practice are telling NAB that they regard this as common practice."Hagger conceded that "a social norm had crept in and become entrenched."Orr made the point in forensic detail that this was not a one-off adviser going rogue, but indicated a whole culture where shortcuts were seen as acceptable.